Believing where we cannot prove

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Andrew, Jr.

4.When someone who is in a position to influence alot of people and says horrible things like God hates fags, or Pastors who tell families to disown their gay kids...that is wrong. God is love. We should always comfort people. Not throw ignorant crap in their face.
Just my 2 cents worth.

This kind of goes to the crux of my question. Now, before I ask my follow-up question let me make it clear that I *agree* with you that telling people to disown gay kids is wrong. However, if we're fearlessly honest we must concede that we have a dog in this fight and so we would *naturally* think this is wrong.

These questions about belief etc. concern me because there are a lot of not-particularly-benign beliefs free floating out there. It seems to me that very many people, however, have adopted a stance that things like evidence doesn't *actually* matter. "If that belief works for you, then it's true for you" seems to be the overall cultural zeitgeist. "Where's the harm in that?" you might ask.

Take an issue like global climate change. Now, the empirical evidence for climate change is pretty strong. The kinds of predictions that scientists were making about, for instance, ice sheet collapse are starting to be observed. We have good historical climate data that goes back quite a ways so we have a reasonable picture of how Earth has responded to various climate forcing in the past. Now, let's say that someone believes that god would never allow humans to change the climate or, for whatever other reason, that it's simply not possible for climate change to be happening. Their *behavior* will be very different than someone who accepts the climate science. That person might think that there's nothing wrong with driving a Hummer or any other gas-guzzling vehicle. That person will want his or her nation to invest in coal-fired plants, tar-sand oil production, etc. If it was ONE person who believed this and placed themselves beyond evidence then that wouldn't be a concern. But once you scale this up to *millions* of people and now you have public policy (or the ability to stall public policy). One person driving a Hummer is no big deal. Half-a-million people driving Hummers IS a big deal.

The key thing here is that this person does not BELIEVE what they are doing is harmful yet it does not change the actual harm being done. The same thing goes for Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps. I take these men at their word: they *actually* believe what they are saying and do NOT believe what they are doing is harmful. At some point I think that society has to stop sticking its head in the sand and actually *deal* with these ideas instead of just pretending that if we're nice and never say anything that might insult someone else the 'bad people' will just go away.

To the segregationists that my parents fought against in the 50's and 60's in Alabama, *they* (my parents) were the ones throwing ignorant crap around because the Jim Crow system was correct and fine. I know that forty or fifty years on this might seem strange to you and I but the segregationists in the 50's and 60's *actually* believed what they were doing was right and completely consonant with the will of God as they understood god to be.

As a black woman and as a gay woman I have been on the business end of different groups non-evidentiary beliefs too many times to grant them the benefit of the doubt that they are generally benign.

It seems to me that God could just as easily be hate as love, I see no reason for God to be love. Certainly the Bible mentions God hating at least as often as it mentions God loving.

Cheers
Aj

[Andrew, Jr.]

I think I have what you are saying. I maybe off, but say so. You are saying that people because of how they were raised really believe in xyz because of that time period. Like older folks not understanding younger folks who live together unmarried. Is this it?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Andrew, Jr.

I think I have what you are saying. I maybe off, but say so. You are saying that people because of how they were raised really believe in xyz because of that time period. Like older folks not understanding younger folks who live together unmarried. Is this it?

That's partially what I'm saying but what I'm actually on about goes in a somewhat different direction. I *do* believe that the next big stages in social equality progress--specifically those parts related to race and sexual orientation--will come after the rest of my parents generation (born in the 1920's), the Silent Generation (born after 1922 but before 1946) and the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation (so the folks who are the age of the Clintons but not the Obamas) are all gone. After that, what will remain will be the trailing edge of the BB generation and then Gen-X and Gen-Y who will ONLY ever know a post-civil rights society and who will have grown up with gay people just being part of society.

However, what I'm on about is actually how we---as members of society---determine which ideas we will treat as true (or true enough to bother acting on). If you believe that there are fairies at the bottom of your garden or that you are really an elf in a human body, that's not really what concerns me here. What DOES concern me is what to do with, to take another example, historical revisionists. If someone believes that history is just a story with no more veracity than, say, Star Wars then we have a problem. There are people who *genuinely* believe that the Holocaust never happened and they are aided and abetted (unwillingly) by people who believe that 'all truths are true for the people who believe them'. This is why I insist that evidence, proof, facts and empiricism actually *matter*. They are imperfect tools but they are the best tools we have at the moment.

Cheers
Aj